Project Nim Page #4

of trying to convince me not to go.

I wasn't panicked.

I wasn't panicked

that the project was just going to

grind to a halt because Laura left.

As I recall, joyce and Bill

pretty much took care of that.

So... I didn't lose any crucial aspect

of the project.

I started to go

to get the boxes to leave,

and Nim pulled loose

from the person's hand,

he climbs to the second floor

of the house.

Then he must have lunged 25 feet.

He landed on me.

He took my head and he started

pounding it into the pavement.

It took four males to get him off me.

He wasn't my child.

He wasn't my baby.

You can't give human nurturing

to an animal that could kill you.

One of the easy

parts of the project

was to advertise for teachers.

It was like, "Uh, this is nice. "

I didn't set out to have women

on the project predominantly,

but it certainly turned out that way.

And if that's the way it turned out,

that's the way it turned out.

I was a trained

interpreter for the deaf.

When I set my mind to something,

I get what I want.

I kept saying, "I want to live here. "

"When I am moving in?

When do I get to move in?"

And I would annoy Herb.

And finally he let me move in.

Probably, as time went on,

it may have become more difficult

for women to work with him.

He was going to take advantage of them

and he was big enough

and strong enough that he could.

I mean, it hurt! His bites hurt.

When he bit your hand, he got the nerve.

And you'd get a running shock

up your arm.

We had epic battles, but we made up.

He'd make that face and sign "sorry".

So, "Well, if I sign this,

she'll forgive me. "

I had a relationship with a chimpanzee,

and I had conversations

with another species.

It's not just him signing

that was important to me.

It was what he was thinking

and experiencing,

because we would talk

when we would hang out.

We would talk about

the things we would see,

the things we would hear.

As far as I'm concerned,

our classroom was the house and the yard

and the field trips that we would take.

Science is

a very objective enterprise.

You can't have personal anecdotes

of how I worked with Nim

up at Delafield

as opposed to the classroom.

That's just

of no interest to a scientist.

Joyce did not see anything

special about the classroom.

Hated it. Hated it, hated it.

He hated it. We hated it.

That's not surprising, because she

didn't get the results in the classroom

that I was hoping for.

- Do you know what time it is?

- Yeah.

Going into a dungeon

of a classroom, which it really was.

I mean, the thing was 15 feet square,

including the observation booth

and everything else.

No windows,

no place really to have any activity.

Trying to get Nim's attention

was a bit of a struggle,

and he would rather have been

been doing something else.

Pay attention to me.

Shh!

So, this is the sign for "dirty",

so we used it for "toilet" for him

because it's a contact sign.

He would jump through the signs

that I asked him to jump through

and then he would have had enough.

And he would say,

"I need to go to the bathroom. "

And that's when I knew,

you little bugger.

You used that sign

because you knew

it would make us leave there

and get us out of there.

He was growing

smarter and smarter.

And smarter in the sense

of recognising situations

that he could take advantage of,

of when he could get what he wanted.

He was starting

to discover himself.

There was a big rock in the front yard

and he used to like to hump it.

And we'd say, "You're gonna

hurt yourself. That's a rock. "

Like, look at himself and go,

"What's that?"

As this whole thing with the physicality

became an issue,

we were much more cautious, I think,

about letting the cats around him,

and letting him play with the cats.

He would even try to,

not engage directly in sexual

relationships with the animals,

but definitely to bring them to him

and to his penis area.

And I just said, "No,

that's not what they're there for. "

We realised, I think

all of us, that it was becoming

increasingly difficult

to pursue the experiment.

Nim was scratching hard,

he was biting harder,

biting more often, biting more people.

We had mentioned

the growing concern that we had

about how to deal with Nim.

Dr Terrace was pretty much

an absentee landlord.

Herb was never alone with Nim,

and Herb never had to spend

any kind of time with him.

Once in a while, you know, photo shoots.

For him to either take photos

or for him to have photos taken of him.

Yes, there were occasional bites.

I imagine they increased in frequency

just because Nim was getting older.

In that sense,

he was becoming more chimp-like.

But it didn't seem to be

a cause for alarm at that point.

It was the end of july,

it was july 28th,

and Bill had him,

and we did the body-to-body transfer.

I mean, you're holding Nim

and the other person comes up

and you just kind of hand

the chimp to the other person.

And I said, "Come on. "

And I got the tether.

You know, you've got the loop first

and I then tied it to my belt.

"Come here. " And he came over

and he put his arms around me.

He just crunched my face.

It just happened.

And I grabbed Nim

and just dragged him into the house.

And he was like,

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!"

"No, no, no. " And I passed

that armoire with that mirror

and saw all this blood.

He had bit through my cheek

almost to the inside of my mouth.

It was folded over,

so you could see inside my face.

I don't recall if she went

to the emergency room,

but I think something

like that happened.

It was just bad.

I was probably worried

that she would sue me,

or this would become public,

this would become public

knowledge about how

life-threatening the project might be.

They couldn't sew it

because of the infection

and the risk of infection,

so I had an open gaping wound

on my face for three months.

And when I got out the hospital, I said,

"You know what? I want to see Nim. "

He went...

And he went to reach for my face again.

I went, "Whoa!

"That's it. I don't need closure now.

I'm out of here. "

I was scared.

I'm tenacious

and I didn't want to let go.

Sort of like breaking up

with a bad boyfriend.

I was sorry that it came to that,

but you just don't know how

Nim is going to change

and you just can't count on

having outstanding teachers

all the time.

I felt I was spreading myself too thinly

and experiencing too much stress

and not enough, you know, good results.

Nobody keeps a chimp

for more than five years,

because at five years,

they don't know their own strength

and they can do

a lot of damage to people.

He called us together and dropped

the bomb and said, "It's over. "

I was one very angry young woman.

You don't say,

"We're not doing this any more. "

And because Herb had that card to play,

he played it,

'cause he was in the power seat.

I think I said,

"There's no point of

this going on scientifically. "

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes